Upstairs 2
2311 Cotner Ave., Los Angeles

We visited Upstairs 2 Thursday @ 8:00 pm
Dish we will try to cook – Lobster Bisque Soup

Restaurant Visit
After having fallen in love with Tavern on our last WCCT outing, we were really looking forward to Upstairs 2. The restaurant is a new addition to The Wine House, which has been around for over 25 years, and the chef is Todd Barrie, who formerly developed the catering operation at Joe’s in Venice. The location is a little sketchy, a small street just east of the 405, one block south of Olympic, but with so many nice cars parked along the road and in the parking lot behind the building, we thought maybe we’d found another hidden gem. We were sorely mistaken.

We visited Upstairs 2 during Dine LA Restaurant Week, and while this is the perfect opportunity for a restaurant to really wow a new customer and turn them into loyal followers, we think Upstairs 2 crumbled to the pressure of having a sold out crowd every night of the week.

If you enter from the street, you walk upstairs (they were very clever with the name), and the restaurant is on the right while the kitchen is on the left. There is a small bar when you immediately enter, followed by a modest size dining room. The restaurant opened in 2005, however the décor looks circa 1980. In fact, Romeo commented that he felt like he was sitting in a conference room from a Marriott hotel. There was even a projector unit attached to the ceiling.

But why judge a book by its cover, we decided to let the food speak for itself. Unfortunately, it didn’t say much to reverse our first impression. We started with the lobster bisque soup (Maine lobster garni) and the duck confit ravioli (game bird consommé, crispy leeks). For the main course we had the herb crusted veal chops (Yukon smashed potatoes, sugar snap peas, red wine sauce) and braised boneless kurobuta pork shank (cranberry beans, orzo, emerald greens, Spanish sherry pork jus). We then ordered the lemon verbena ricotta cheesecake (crème anglaise) and peanut brittle snow ball (vanilla bean gelato, cayenne caramel sauce) for dessert.

Unless we’re missing something, and we know we’re not professional chefs, we think they forgot to add the cream to our lobster bisque. We’ve never heard of a bisque with no cream in it. The broth was nicely made and had a rich lobster flavor but it certainly wasn’t a bisque. Maybe the menu was supposed to say just lobster soup? Not sure. The ravioli was nice and tender with the duck juicy as well, however the sauce on the dish was its downfall. It was a bit too sweet and over powered the flavor of the duck.

The herb crusted veal chops was a nicely composed dish. We enjoyed the flavor of thyme and thought the breading on the veal added a nice texture. The veal, however, was slightly overcooked. The potatoes and snap peas seemed like what you would make at home. We think maybe the person in charge of putting the cream into the bisque was also in charge of the final plating of the braised pork shank, and again forgot to add the sherry pork jus. With the exception of not having any jus and thus the plate was a little dry overall, the rest of the ingredients were well combined. The pork was tender and fell easily into pieces while the orzo and greens lent texture to the dish. We thought it was a bit odd to have both the orzo and the cranberry beans on the plate but we think the addition of jus would have counterbalanced the dryness the two ingredients created when combined. There also seemed to be very little seasoning to the dish.

By the time dessert was served, we were kind of over the whole experience. The lemon verbena ricotta cheesecake solidified our thoughts that while the food was decent, our overall impression was that most people could cook the same, if not better, for themselves at home. The peanut brittle snow ball was the only plate that truly seemed like it was an actual restaurant dish. The dessert was refined and not something you could easily make at home. We’re not sure how they rolled the cold gelato in the powder-fine peanut brittle, but it made a wonderful flavor profile of sweet and salty. The cayenne was also an unexpected heat.

We left the restaurant hoping that we’d simply visited on a bad night. As the guests at the table next to us were leaving, we overhead them commenting to their waiter that the food was not up to their normal standards, they seemed to be repeat customers. Not sure we’ll return to the restaurant to see if the food gets better, but we would love to hear from those of you who have eaten there before about how your experience was and what you thought about the food. On a good note, Romeo tried the wine flight with his dishes and enjoyed all 3 wines. Amanda ordered a glass of Zinfandel and enjoyed it as well.

Shopping
(prices reflect the cost of the package, not the portion we used.) The rest of the ingredients we already had in the kitchen.

Whole Foods
Carrots $.70
Leek $3.38
Fennel Seed $3.99
Sherry Wine $3.99
Yellow Onion $1.50
Garlic $1.40
Tarragon $1.99

Santa Monica Farmer’s Market
Tomatoes $4.50/lb
Thyme $1

Santa Monica Seafood
Maine Lobster, 2 $51.69

Williams Sonoma
Chinois Buouillon Strainer $70

Recipe
Below is our take on lobster bisque soup. While we have no idea exactly how they prepare theirs, we looked around online for recipes (which all had cream, but we omitted that part) and then combined that knowledge with the flavors we tasted in the original dish and went from there.

Makes 6 servings.

2 live Main lobsters (1 1/2 lbs each)
1 medium yellow onion, roughly chopped
3 cloves garlic, roughly crushed
1 carrot, roughly chopped
2 celery rib, roughly chopped
2 leeks, whites and pale greens only, roughly chopped
2 Black Brandy Wine tomato (or any dark heirloom, vine-ripened tomato), crushed in a bowl
4 tarragon stems with leaves
1/4 tsp fennel seed
2 tsp whole black peppercorns
1 TBSP fresh chives, finely chopped
1/2 cup dry sherry
2 TBSP olive oil
4 cups reserved lobster water
¼ cup reserved juices from lobster
Salt to taste
cheesecloth

Hardware: Chinois

Fill a 6 quart pot with salted water and bring to a boil. Drop in the lobsters head first, holding them by the tails. Cover tightly and cook for 8 minutes. Remove from water using tongs and transfer to a bowl of ice cold water. Once cool, drain water. Meanwhile, reserve 5 cups of the water from the pot. Next, over a bowl twist off the tail and claws from the lobster head (the bowl will capture juices from lobster). Remove the meat from the lobster and reserve tomalley and juices from lobster. Try to keep the claw meat intact. Discard head sacs and any roe. Cut the tail meat into 1/2” pieces (the claw meat can be used for any other eating purpose) and refrigerate in a covered container. In a plastic bag, place the lobster shells and body, tie and place in another plastic bag. Break shells with a mallet, hammer, or rolling pin. Set aside.

In a piece of cheesecloth, place tarragon, fennel seed and black pepper and tie to make a sac. In a large pot, heat oil over medium-high heat. Add broken lobster shell and body parts and cook for about 8 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add onion, garlic, celery, carrot, leeks, tomatoes, cheesecloth sac and sherry and simmer about 5 minutes. Add the reserved cooking liquid, tomalley and reserved juices from lobster. Simmer stirring occasionally for about 1 hour.

In a chinois or fine mesh strainer, pour contents from pot into bowl. Try and squeeze out as much liquid from the chinois as you can using a pestle or a metal spoon. Pour the liquid back in the pot along with the contents from the chinois. Bring the pot back to a boil and boil for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Dump contents into the chinois once more and drain as much liquid as possible. Season liquid with salt.

Plating

Pour the soup into a shallow bowl. Add a ¼ cup of the lobster pieces to the bowl. Sprinkle chives into the soup.

Rating- We give our dish 5 out of 5 stars.

We’re just going to go out on a limb here and pat ourselves on the back for this one. In the history of We Can Cook That we’ve only given ourselves a perfect 5 once. We feel we’ve come extremely close to hitting certain dishes perfectly, but didn’t give ourselves a 5 because of very minor refinements that only a professional restaurant can achieve. In the case of the lobster bisque… or should we say quasi lobster bisque (minus the cream), we’re going to give ourselves a 5 based on not only flavor and texture profiles, but on the fact that we feel we matched Upstairs 2’s dish without really knowing many of the base ingredients in it.

Usually if we’re cooking something like, let’s say, a risotto for example, we know the type of rice to buy, we know to saute the rice until translucent and we know there could possibly be white wine, butter, and garlic in it. In this case we didn’t know if it was a bisque or wasn’t a bisque. We didn’t know if this was a lobster stock that they forgot to add cream to, or if this was an intentional broth. And because of this, we didn’t know the base herbs, type of tomato to use, or the type of vegetables to flavor the broth, and yet we managed to come up with something very close to the Upstairs 2 product. Regardless, it gave us reason to eat some lobster and anytime we can do that we’re happy with end result.

How would you rate our recipe? We look forward to hearing feedback from you guys. We would also love to hear from anyone who has dined at Upstairs 2 before and hopefully had a much better experience. How was the food? Feel free to email us if you have any questions on the recipe and don’t forget to vote for next week’s restaurant!